Wins Above Salary Player (WASP)

Free agency signings have already begun, as Geovany Soto re-signs with the Texas Rangers with a one-year, $3.05 million contract with incentives. The Rangers have stated that Soto will be their #1 catcher for the 2014 season, as he was behind A.J. Pierzynski for the next two years.

The Mariners have also signed their new manager in Lloyd McClendon. He was a coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1997-2000 and the Detroit Tigers from 2006 until he was hired, and was manager of the Pirates from 2001-2005. If you’re a Pirates fan, you might remember him literally stealing 1^st base after getting ejected from a game in 2001. Hilarious!

The finalists for MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Manager of the Year have also come out. I will talk more in depth about these later, but here are the finalists:

 

AL MVP:

Miguel Cabrera

Mike Trout

Chris Davis

NL MVP:

Paul Goldschmidt

Andrew McCutchen

Yadier Molina

 

AL Rookie of the Year:

Wil Myers

Jose Iglesias

Chris Archer

NL Rookie of the Year:

Jose Fernandez

Yasiel Puig

Shelby Miller

AL Manager of the Year:

John Farrell

Bob Melvin

Terry Francona

NL Manager of the Year:

Clint Hurdle

Fredi Gonzalez

Don Mattingly

I’ve been taking a look at the top free agent hitters over the past few days, as well as the free agent hitters that teams should watch out for, but we’re only halfway there. There’s an abundance of pitchers that are on the market this year, including Japanese star Masahiro Tanaka, who will be a star wherever he goes.

But these pitchers, as well as some of the top hitters, want a whole lot of money. The question is: Are they worth that much money?

I’ve looked at Wins Above Replacement a lot in this article. A WAR of 2.0 or higher is a solid starter, a WAR of about 5.0 is all-star quality, and a WAR of 8.0 or higher is MVP status. Yes, you will find different WAR numbers if you look at Baseball-Reference or Fangraphs, because they incorporate different things into the equation, but overall it’s relatively the same.

But take for example the Mike Trout vs. Miguel Cabrera race… again. This year, Trout had a 9.2 WAR, which was the best for a hitter since Barry Bonds. Miguel Cabrera’s was 7.2, which is still very good, but not 10.9 like Trout.

Here’s where things get interesting. Let’s average both numbers, which makes 8.2, and now give it to both players. Before, if you had to give out the MVP just by Wins Above Replacement, holding all other factors constant, then you’d give it to Trout. But now (same conditions), both have the same WAR, so who do you pick? Do you just flip a coin?

Remember what MVP stands for: Most Valuable Player. Which player would teams rather have, even if their numbers were the same? I’d hope they’d pick Mike Trout. Why? Because he’s cheaper.

Yes, it’s all about the money game. In 2013, Mike Trout made $510,000, and Miguel Cabrera made $21,000,000. Hell yeah I’d rather take Trout.

You can find the equation for Wins Above Replacement here, and you should notice that it does not include anything about salary. I’ve been working on trying to fix this, and I think I’ve found an answer. I call it Wins Above Salary Player (WASP), averaging how many wins a player really gets for a team compared to another player with relatively the same salary.

Before, my equation was:

 

So we’re working with three variables: WAR, the player’s salary, and the average salary of, in this example, the 2013 salary. Luckily for this, the 2013 salary is the same for both Trout and Cabrera.

According to baseballplayersalaries.com, the actual average MLB Salary (adjusted) is $3,305,393. So let’s plug in some numbers.

Trout’s WASP: 9.2* (3305393/510000) = 59.627

That’s absurd!

Cabrera’s WASP: 7.2* (3305393/21000000) = 1.133

Oof.

Yes, it’s obvious that Trout needs a raise. But does Cabrera need a cut? When you look at his resume, you can argue no. That’s when I realized that I need to adjust some things. I’ve divided WASP into two equations, and now I’ve added a constant a and b, to players with salaries below the average and above, respectively. If the player’s salary is the exact same as the average, then the constant is just one.

Using calculations, I’ve found a (for players with salaries below the average) to be .7265. For b (players with salaries above the average), I’ve found it equal to 1.4722.

So now we calculate Trout and Cabrera:

Trout: WASP= 9.2* .7265* (3305393/510000) = 43.318

Cabrera: WASP = 7.2 * 1.4722* (3305393/21000000) = 1.668

So did this do anything? A little- it helps shorten some of the outliers like Trout. Cabrera is still not even a quality starter, though. But yes, Cabrera is still a great player. So what do I do?

What I’m saying is that no player is worth $21 million/year. Think about what you can do with $21 million. Remember when the Red Sox traded Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez, and Carl Crawford? Gonzalez was worth $21 million, Beckett worth $15.75 million, and Crawford $20 million, so what that did is that it got some salary surplus so they could go after other players.

And that’s what they did- they got players like Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, and Koji Uehara. Combined, they are worth $30,250,000. That gives them a surplus of $26.5 million.

Let’s look at WASP without these outliers. Hisashi Iwakuma, a Cy Young candidate, had a 7.0 WAR and made $6.5 million in 2013. His WASP would be 5.24. That’s still really good. Allen Craig, who was crucial to the Cardinals run to the postseason, had a 2.2 WAR with a $1.175 million contract. His WASP rounds to 3.019. That makes him an even bigger quality starter.

So here are the official two equations:

 

When Player Salary is less than the Average Salary, and:

 

When Player Salary is greater than the Average Salary.

EDITORS NOTE: To make things a bit more accurate, for players whose salaries are between $3 million and $4 million, you can say that the coefficient of the value is just one. Then it would just be WAR * the ratio. 

If a player’s WAR is negative, then take the reciprocal of the ratio between salary and average salary. That cuts some slack for a player who’s salary is less than the average, but really beats up on the guys that are making the big bucks.

How do you like it? Please email me at statsbuddy42@gmail.com for any questions/comments/concerns, or comment below with your opinion.

-Evan Boyd